ABSTRACT
This chapter establishes a way of conceptualizing the political significance of the ways in which Meg Stuart's choreographic approaches challenge the perception of dance. It focuses on the concept of sculpting of spectatorship as formulated by Carrie Lambert-Beatty in her book on the work of Yvonne Rainer, Being Watched. Rainer's strategies are in particular focused on theatricality, which forms a key element of her sculpting of spectatorship. Meg Stuart's choreographic techniques of dissociation can be analyzed with the concept of sculpting of spectatorship as formulated by Lambert-Beatty. Lambert-Beatty develops her argument from Rainer's formulation of her motives for making Trio A. The key notion of theatricality is its direct address to the spectator's physical presence to the aesthetic event. Stuart's work of fragmentation and distortion makes use of what is called micromovement. In the movement vocabulary of Violet, Stuart rigorously investigates the intimate or peripersonal space immediately surrounding the body.
